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This is a really good offering for media that you typically will keep locally for instant access, yet you want to have an off-site backup in a way that lives fo

by buro9 14y ago

This is a really good offering for media that you typically will keep locally for instant access, yet you want to have an off-site backup in a way that lives for a very long time. Dropbox should work here, but it's simply too expensive. My photo library is 175GB. That isn't excessive when considering I store the digital negatives and this represents over a decade. I don't mind not being able to access it for a few hours, I'm thinking disaster recovery of highly sentimental digital memories here. If my flat burns down destroying my local copy, and my personal off-site backup (HDD at an old friends' house) is also destroyed... then nothing would be lost if Amazon have a copy. In fact I very much doubt anyone I know that isn't a tech actually keeps all of their data backed-up even in that manner. I find myself already wondering: My 12TB NAS, how much is used (4TB)... could I backup all of it remotely? It's crazy that this approaches being feasible. It's under 30GBP per month for Ireland storage for my all of the data on my NAS. To be able to say, "All of my photos are safe for years and it's easy to append to the backup.". That would be something. A service offering a simple consumer interface for this could really do well.

tommoor 14y ago
Perhaps DropBox et al will be able to make use of this Infrastructure to lower the costs of their service...
- lubos 14y ago
  or finally to break even?
- ch0wn 14y ago
  How do you think they could use this service? I can't think of a use case for them.
  - biot 14y ago
    They store the last 30 days worth of versions of every file you modify. Dropbox could keep versions from the last 10 days in S3 but move the rest to Glacier. Restores for older versions wouldn't be instant, but if S3 storage is a nontrivial expense for them moving the bulk of previous versions to Glacier would cut down on costs.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      And 30 days is only for free accounts. Packrat is a Dropbox Pro add-on feature that saves your file history indefinitely.
    - tommoor 14y ago
      I would guess it's a non-trivial expense ;-)
RoryH 14y ago
I currently just backup my digital photos (~20Gb) to S3 via replication from my QNAP NAS... works out about $3 per month... I'll probably use the option they mention here to auto move content to Glacier from S3 coming soon... "In the coming months, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) plans to introduce an option that will allow you to seamlessly move data between Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier using data lifecycle policies."
DeepDuh 14y ago
sigh Dropbox should not be used as a backup system. A system that synchronizes live should never get that role, except if they can guarantee that old data is never overwritten, new is always appended. This is not the case with dropbox - I've experienced multiple scary occurrences of old versions going to the nirvana with certain user actions. In certain cases the old data just appears to be gone, in other cases the web interface shows them but a restore results in an error message. Especially data move appears to be buggy. Dropbox appears to be simple, but the backend processes are really not and there is too much going on for it to be a reliable backup system, especially if you also share some of your data to team mates. edit: emphasis formatting, niceifying.
- buro9 14y ago
  No sigh was necessary, I understand. I even mentioned that I have a NAS and off-site backup... so either you didn't read it all or you stopped the moment you encountered the word "Dropbox" and started typing. That said, people DO use DropBox as backup. If you take a walk around the British Library and asked every PhD student working there how they "Backup" their research and work in progress, I bet every single person who believes that they have a backup will say "Dropbox", and the only exceptions will be a few who don't really have a backup. I know that because I ensured my girlfriend does have a real backup solution in place that is tested. Not one of her peers seems to. DropBox is used for backup because they've made file sync so damn easy that most people can be convinced that if a file exists in many places, it is backed-up. My whole point is that now storage for long term backup is priced in a way that is affordable to most, that consumer services may emerge that offer true backup to consumers and can successfully migrate people from lesser solutions (DropBox, stacks of CD-ROMs, etc). One of the things about backup is that it needs to be easy. Currently the size and cost of backups make it expensive, and the only way to reduce the cost makes it difficult (HDD local copies stored at a friends' house for example). By reducing the cost, perhaps we can finally increase the ease... and then a day may come in which most people have a real backup solution.
  - DeepDuh 14y ago
    "I even mentioned that I have a NAS and off-site backup... so either you didn't read it all or you stopped the moment you encountered the word "Dropbox" and started typing." No offense, but this post doesn't quite match what you wrote originally. My sigh was in response to the phrase "Dropbox should work here, ...". You didn't state security as your concern as to why not use Dropbox, rather it was cost. This might lead someone who only needs <2GB backed up to believe that Dropbox is perfectly fine for that task. "DropBox is used for backup because they've made file sync so damn easy that most people can be convinced that if a file exists in many places, it is backed-up." And that's exactly what I'm scared about and why I'm saying it again and again that you shouldn't do it - if only one person listens and avoids potential data loss because of it I've already reached my goal. "One of the things about backup is that it needs to be easy. Currently the size and cost of backups make it expensive, and the only way to reduce the cost makes it difficult (HDD local copies stored at a friends' house for example). By reducing the cost, perhaps we can finally increase the ease... and then a day may come in which most people have a real backup solution." Agreed. IMO no consumer backup system is quite there yet. TimeMachine is very close, if only it would do better logging and have some more intelligence about warning messages.

by buro9 14y ago

tommoor 14y ago

Perhaps DropBox et al will be able to make use of this Infrastructure to lower the costs of their service...

lubos 14y ago
or finally to break even?
ch0wn 14y ago
How do you think they could use this service? I can't think of a use case for them.
- biot 14y ago
  They store the last 30 days worth of versions of every file you modify. Dropbox could keep versions from the last 10 days in S3 but move the rest to Glacier. Restores for older versions wouldn't be instant, but if S3 storage is a nontrivial expense for them moving the bulk of previous versions to Glacier would cut down on costs.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    And 30 days is only for free accounts. Packrat is a Dropbox Pro add-on feature that saves your file history indefinitely.
  - tommoor 14y ago
    I would guess it's a non-trivial expense ;-)

RoryH 14y ago

I currently just backup my digital photos (~20Gb) to S3 via replication from my QNAP NAS... works out about $3 per month... I'll probably use the option they mention here to auto move content to Glacier from S3 coming soon... "In the coming months, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) plans to introduce an option that will allow you to seamlessly move data between Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier using data lifecycle policies."

DeepDuh 14y ago

sigh Dropbox should not be used as a backup system. A system that synchronizes live should never get that role, except if they can guarantee that old data is never overwritten, new is always appended. This is not the case with dropbox - I've experienced multiple scary occurrences of old versions going to the nirvana with certain user actions. In certain cases the old data just appears to be gone, in other cases the web interface shows them but a restore results in an error message. Especially data move appears to be buggy. Dropbox appears to be simple, but the backend processes are really not and there is too much going on for it to be a reliable backup system, especially if you also share some of your data to team mates. edit: emphasis formatting, niceifying.

buro9 14y ago
No sigh was necessary, I understand. I even mentioned that I have a NAS and off-site backup... so either you didn't read it all or you stopped the moment you encountered the word "Dropbox" and started typing. That said, people DO use DropBox as backup. If you take a walk around the British Library and asked every PhD student working there how they "Backup" their research and work in progress, I bet every single person who believes that they have a backup will say "Dropbox", and the only exceptions will be a few who don't really have a backup. I know that because I ensured my girlfriend does have a real backup solution in place that is tested. Not one of her peers seems to. DropBox is used for backup because they've made file sync so damn easy that most people can be convinced that if a file exists in many places, it is backed-up. My whole point is that now storage for long term backup is priced in a way that is affordable to most, that consumer services may emerge that offer true backup to consumers and can successfully migrate people from lesser solutions (DropBox, stacks of CD-ROMs, etc). One of the things about backup is that it needs to be easy. Currently the size and cost of backups make it expensive, and the only way to reduce the cost makes it difficult (HDD local copies stored at a friends' house for example). By reducing the cost, perhaps we can finally increase the ease... and then a day may come in which most people have a real backup solution.
- DeepDuh 14y ago
  "I even mentioned that I have a NAS and off-site backup... so either you didn't read it all or you stopped the moment you encountered the word "Dropbox" and started typing." No offense, but this post doesn't quite match what you wrote originally. My sigh was in response to the phrase "Dropbox should work here, ...". You didn't state security as your concern as to why not use Dropbox, rather it was cost. This might lead someone who only needs <2GB backed up to believe that Dropbox is perfectly fine for that task. "DropBox is used for backup because they've made file sync so damn easy that most people can be convinced that if a file exists in many places, it is backed-up." And that's exactly what I'm scared about and why I'm saying it again and again that you shouldn't do it - if only one person listens and avoids potential data loss because of it I've already reached my goal. "One of the things about backup is that it needs to be easy. Currently the size and cost of backups make it expensive, and the only way to reduce the cost makes it difficult (HDD local copies stored at a friends' house for example). By reducing the cost, perhaps we can finally increase the ease... and then a day may come in which most people have a real backup solution." Agreed. IMO no consumer backup system is quite there yet. TimeMachine is very close, if only it would do better logging and have some more intelligence about warning messages.